~ Tapping into our systems

Category Archives: guns

I saw the first one out of the corner of my eye
The second ran into view
they were loping across the field
next to my house
I ran outside to get a better look
and was rewarded by seeing a third coyote
following the first two
His tail was out straight from his body
as he ran
and looked for humans.
He hid in a ditch before he crossed the road
into the large field across the street.

Humans around here have guns
and like to shoot coyotes
I’ve seen them pop a coyote right off the ground
with a long-range shot across a field.
In fact, a local newspaper
has a columnist who hates coyotes
and writes about what demons they are
He posts pictures of them caught in his traps
Their legs all bloody from trying to get away
I asked him not to post such horrible photos
they were offensive
He wrote back to me to not look at them
if I was such a sissy.
He runs a coyote-pest business
he says he has a license to “put them down” in a humane manner
which is probably a shot in the head at close range
after he traps them and starves them
His hate appalls me.

I wished these coyotes safe passage through the night
looking for their dinner
and wished them protection from the other humans nearby.

Gun violence is not new to a large part of our population. Parents live in fear for their young children – living in neighborhoods ruled by who has the most guns. Granted, the attack on a movie theater is gathering all the headlines, but what do we know about damage guns do on a daily basis in some of our inner cities or our rural communities?

I remember a scene in Terminator 2 where a young John Connor is looking at two little boys fighting with toy guns during an afternoon playtime.

Looking back is easy to do. You know what happened – maybe not the why or how, but your mind can make those things up to your satisfaction. It’s only when you realize that you might have not had the right angle on things that you start to worry.

Take the shooting in the Colorado movie theater – where ironically people went to watch horrible violence they could never fathom and they ended up being thrown into real violence with blazing gunfire. bloody wounds and choking on tear gas. That audience was able to see first-hand what automatic weapons can do to a person’s body – they experienced the terror none of us wants to face. We don’t mind depictions of violence, but the real thing makes us run and be afraid.

What led this man to do this act? Was it the previous movie’s lines on creating chaos that appealed to him? In that movie, Batman was not effective against the kind of criminal who would just commit violence for violence’s sake. There is no motive except for the very act of doing it. How do you fight that? We still don’t know why this man planned and executed an attack on an audience he never met. When he fired into the fleeing crowds – what was he seeing? Was he feeling powerful or nothing at all- like we do when we watch the A-team blow up a warehouse?

We’ll have to wait to see. And even then, it might not make any more sense.